The new edition of Zoetrope: All-Story came in the mail today. Guest designer Tom Waits. A fifth of the cover is torn off, and the photograph of Tom Waits on the back of the magazine has various tears through it. I’m unable to decide whether this was by his design, the anonymous mechanics of the US Postal Service creating a new medium of found art, or a post-production scheme by Tom Waits to meddle with housewives enduring deteriorating intellectual capacities. Perhaps Evelyn could explain this to me. It’s somebody’s commentary on something somewhere, for certain.

Nathanael bought me a pot of yellow tulips two weeks ago. We thought they were of the regular variety, but ever since they’ve come to reside in our house they’ve exploded like small stars blowing up, or screaming lion heads. If I had better ears I’m sure I’d hear the unnatural sounds they’re emitting.

Diapers arrived in the mail from Baby Cotton Bottoms. My first order from them, and let me just say, I give them my full reccomendation.

Goodfellas also arrived from Netflix.

Saw the documentary Born into Brothels last week. The sins of the fathers are passed unto the children, and down generational lines. Let us all beware of what trials we might leave our children.

An interesting note by James Billinger on the Soviet treatment of Hamlet: “A production of Hamlet during the period of the first five-year plan portrayed the Danish prince as a fat and decadent coward who recites ‘to be or not to be’ half-drunk in a bar. A critic of that period went so far as to claim that the real hero of the play was Fortinbras. He alone had a positive goal; and the fact that he came from victory in battle to pronounce the final words of the play symbolized rational, militant modernity triumphing over the ‘feudal morality’ of pointless bloodletting that had dominated the last act prior to his arrival.” (via Dr. Leithart)

Actually, the more interesting and applicable portions of Billinger’s thoughts on Russia and Hamlet have to do with the Christology of the play. You can find that too at Leithart’s site.

Thane Rosenbaum discusses the difference between a novel and a screenplay. Now you’ll realize that the people that like a book better than the corresponding film are the ones with the fertile imaginations and the penchants for complex psychologies. But you knew that already.

Anatomy

We did not expect a young woman.
her skin still tight, but cold.
We were afraid to touch, her features
not the kind to beckon young men:
her nose a mountain on the plain
of her face, her neck and arms
thin as dried reeds. But here,
hands sheathed in latex,
our scalpel blades disappeared

into her skin, until we pushed back
the clean lines of dermis like curtains,
her small muscles and organs revealed.
Awestruck, the Latin rose to our lips
like a sigh: the graceful length
of her gracilis, her shapely gluteus medius,
the sweep of the orbicularis oris
beneath her stiff, unsmiling lips.

We were never satisfied again
to kiss the surface of a pretty face.
At last we’d learned the secrets
of the deep, become enamored
with what lay beneath.

By Jennifer Gresham . Listen on public radio. (needs Real Audio)

If the LiveJournal and Xanga and numerous other journaling sites are the digital devolution of the ancient diary which writers and young girls the world over used to keep under their pillows at night, then what are weblogs descended from? Apparently, blogs devolve from the once common commonplace. Only now, our family doesn’t have to wait until we’re dead to come leafing through our thoughts on various topics. Naturally, the commonplace only worked well if you chose good categories. If you were uncomfortable with categorizing data, you could, like some people, use an alphabetical index or, like others, enter notes by date. A few bloggers picked up on this long before me, but I thought it was interesting enough to file.